Driveway sensor recommendation

[apostolakisl]

I went ahead and programmed my Blue Iris to do what is in that video.  It works very well.  It triggers ISY which beeps a number of switches in my house as well as sending me an email with photo of the car entering.  So far, no false alarms.  I have it set to only trigger when someone enters the driveway, not exit.

[apostolakisl]

So we had a big storm last night, first one since I started playing with the blue iris notification for an object moving up my driveway.  Well, it doesn't do well, at night, in heavy sideways rain.  Perhaps in the daytime without the IR lighting up the drops things would be better.  But I got about 30 notifications last night.  I'll be re-doing that program to shut the "chirp" off in the middle of the night.  Incidentally, the chirp has nothing to do with it recording.  It still records on any motion, not just something traveling up the drive.  Perhaps this would work fine if I turned the IR off, but then I would need two cameras since I want to capture if something that doesn't have headlights is milling around on my driveway at night.

[larryllix]

Would the iR radiated from a warm car engine trigger it without the iR reflection created by illumination?

[apostolakisl]

58 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Would the iR radiated from a warm car engine trigger it without the iR reflection created by illumination?

I don't think so.  These aren't like Flir cameras.  You don't see the different temperatures of things.  When an object is outside of the IR range it is just black, no shades of anything.

[apostolakisl]

I've also been getting a false alarm when the IR lights turn on and off.  So two false alarms per day at predictable times.  That and big bad rain storm, which I also think would not happen with ir, are the issues.  I suspect if I set the ir to off, I would not getting any false alarms.  But then that camera wouldn't see anything at night that didn't have headlights.  So I think that is where it lives.  Either no IR, or you just deal with the false alarms as listed.

[apostolakisl]

I'm thinking the morning/evening false alarm is when the camera switches from color to black and white or vice-versa.  Blue Iris sees all those color changes as motion.  I don't think it is the IR turning on/off (though that happens at about the same time).  I'm going to set to black and white 24/7, just for the driveway entry profile of that camera.  It will still see in color for regular motion detection/recording.  

[Mustang65]

Not sure if you have decided on a remote sensor. I was tinkering around and wanted to see what it would take to add a PIR motion sensor to the Insteon I/O Module. The I/O module is Dual Band so distance should not be an issue. I had all the necessary parts.  Unfortunately, you cannot just connect the Motion Sensor's Signal lead to the I/O module, it does not work. Just a few parts to make it work. Easy DIY project. Check the video out below.

So what can you do with:
(1) - PIR motion sensor module (5 for $10)
(1) - 2N3904 NPN Transistor
(1) - 10K ohm resistor
(1) - Insteon I/O Module
(1) - Small project box

I uploaded a video with the working circuit.

I/O Link Video

I tested the Motion Sensor to a distance of 15' and it worked fine. There are adjustments for sensitivity and distance.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Mustang65

[apostolakisl]

Played around with Blue Iris settings and have eliminated all false alarms.  It hasn't rained yet, so we'll see about that one.  What I did was make the buffer zone between the two tracking zones bigger.  What this does is require an object to start in one zone, and then travel across another zone, and then finally when it enters the last zone, it triggers.  With the larger area between the two trigger zones, an "object" needs to sustain itself further while traveling in the correct direction.  When the start and finish zone don't have a large buffer between them, any motion detected at the edge of the starting zone only has to move or expand a tiny bit before it enters the next zone resulting in a trigger.  

[apostolakisl]

It snows where I live once every few years.  Guess what also makes the camera alerts of someone/thing moving up the driveway . . . yup  .. . snow.  We had snow last night and I got a lot of house beeping.  So, outside of snow and heavy rain, this works really well.  I'm not sure how to fix the snow and heavy rain.   Both overwhelm the camera with motion, maybe there is some way to tell the camera that if it is getting motion all over the place to ignore it.

[jasont]

1 hour ago, apostolakisl said:

 Both overwhelm the camera with motion, maybe there is some way to tell the camera that if it is getting motion all over the place to ignore it.

Have you seen the project that integrates BI with DeepStack AI (which you host/manage yourself)?  Haven't tried it yet but it's high on my list of things to try.  

https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/tool-tutorial-free-ai-person-detection-for-blue-iris.37330/

[ELA]

Setting up my first PTZ camera using the latest Blue Iris.   Deepstack has caught my attention.   Wondering if anyone is using it and what their experience has been.

and also

how long until the machines take over ?